The identification of items within a collection is frequently performed in a variety of contexts. As one example, retail checkout typically involves a customer's handing the goods that they would like to purchase to a cashier at a checkout register, either by placing them on a conveyor belt or by leaving them on the cart/basket, and by a cashier manually separating all the goods and pricing them, either by manually typing the prices of the goods into the register or by manually using a barcode detector. Both manually-inputting the price and scanning the barcode on the product involve the identification of the goods being checked out. The automation of identification allows for a streamlined checkout experience. In some retail outlets, self-checkout processes allow a customer to identify items themselves (e.g., by scanning the items on a barcode scanner).
Other examples of circumstances involving the identification of items includes picking and packing orders to be shipped from a warehouse (e.g., verifying that a box has been packed with the contents listed on a packing list), kitting for manufacturing (e.g., ensuring that a particular container of components to be assembled contains all of the necessary components), and surgical counting (e.g., ensuring that all of the tools that were inserted into a patient over the course of a surgical procedure were removed from the patient before the completion of the procedure).